Ranfurly Shield fever freebie in Hastings next week

The Ranfurly Shield's belated arrival in Hawke's Bay last month, the precursor to a new season of Shield fever with a defence at the Regional Sports Park on June 26, the first Ranfurly Shield match in Hastings since 1926. Photo / Paul Taylor

The build-up to the Hawke’s Bay Magpies’ first Ranfurly Shield defence of 2024 has started in earnest with the Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union’s announcement of a general admission freebie for the match in Hastings.

The union will only be charging for seating in the 2500-capacity grandstand for the Wednesday afternoon match against King Country at the Hawke’s Bay Regional Sports Park, starting at 3pm on June 26.

It will be the first defence since the Magpies became the Shield holders for the fourth time in a decade with a 20-18 capital-city win over the Wellington Lions on September 30 last year.

The Ranfurly Shield's belated arrival in Hawke's Bay last month, the precursor to a new season of Shield fever with a defence at the Regional Sports Park on June 26, the first Ranfurly Shield match in Hastings since 1926. Photo / Paul Taylor

It’ll also be the first for a trophy reminted after it broke in half during the post-match team revelry back in Napier, and, most importantly for the union, the first Ranfurly Shield match in Hastings for 98 years.

And it will be the first Hawke’s Bay Magpies game at the Regional Sports Park, where the field at the William Nelson athletics precinct was opened in 2008, replacing the former major Hastings sports arena, Nelson Park.

All of the Ranfurly Shield matches in Hawke’s Bay since June 5, 1926, have been played in Napier at McLean Park, which, after recent maintenance and relaying of the turf, will not be available until next month, but the Regional Sports Park has hosted some of the Hawke’s Bay Tui women’s Farah Palmer Cup matches.

Hawke’s Bay Rugby Union chief executive officer Jay Campbell said there will be hospitality facilities such as marquees at the match, for which national weather agency MetService currently has a long-range computer-generated June 26 forecast for showers and southerlies.

The match programme for the last Hawke's Bay-King Country Ranfurly Shield match in 1969.

Children’s rugby is being scheduled to set the scene for the match, which will be the first time Hawke’s Bay and King Country have met in a Shield match since a 19-16 win to the Bay the last season of the Magpies’ 1966-1969 shield era, and the first in any competitive match since a Magpies win during the NPC Division 2 competition in 2001.

Campbell said: “We are really excited for Hastings to have the Magpies playing in Hastings again, and we are and we are looking forward to considering if we can bring games to Hastings again in the future.”

While the Magpies’ wider training squad has been training for several weeks, including two trial matches against Manawatū Turbos squads, the side for the game will not to be named until after this Saturday’s club rugby.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.